Lifting
by Sderai
Summary: Soap is being sent on a suicide mission to Montserrat; he'll leave behind Officers who don't know he knew, his unit, and his girl.


AN: This is an experiment and my first foray into this fandom, as well as into writing for quite some time. Should I continue?

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Grip. Settle. Drop shoulders, lower back. Inhale. Push. Push. Muscles bunch. Keep pushing. Stop. Exhale. Down. Grunt. Repeat. Repeat until burning shoulders and biceps tell you something is happening. Until there's nothing to see but the steady rise and fall of the bar above you, nothing to hear but the grunts of your own body pushing back, nothing to feel but broad brushstrokes of pain along every muscle fibre.

"I ate your dinner."

I'm not surprised by his words, keep going, keep pushing. He's been there for long enough now that I can smell him. A grunt coincides with his announcement and he affects to take it as a response. "It was very tasty. I didn't know they served you haggis on your birthday."

If it were possible I'd swear at him. The grunt this time is suitably unimpressed instead. Apparently not unimpressed enough to stop him from sitting down on the bench next to me. "Or Whiskey. It was pretty damn good actually…I really must work on training them to do the same fo-" He breaks off to grab the bars, dumping them unceremoniously onto the rack where they belong before I can throw them at him, running over to the corner by the treadmills, taking a flying leap over them and laughing as I run over to do the same. Bastard turned it on! I'm running full tilt trying to get at the controls to stop it, pinioned by the walls from jumping off it and scared of trying to use my hands in case I break an expensive piece of kit. Or the machine.

"You know you used to be able to run faster than the machine" he taunts, leaning back against the wall, arms crossed, smirk as wide and murky as the Thames. "Now you're just a slow Michelin man."

I give up, skidding off behind it and searching for a stick to poke him with, or to turn off the machine so I don't look like a one-man Laurel and Hardy. It's while I'm wheeling a weights bar complete with weight because I hate having to wrestle with them more than necessary that he slips out and around to the door. "You're getting slow mate. You really think having biceps the size of Bournemouth'll help you? Anything will it'll be running." As if to prove the point I was suddenly alone in the gym. Tossing the weights back on the tree I content myself with a shower, ignoring his so called 'words of wisdom'. It's not like running is going to make me feel nearly as good, or solve anything. Running away just means you have to fight another day.

Because he's a Captain, he has plenty of other friends of his own rank. There's no shortage of officers to go around, so they always say and they're right – never one when you need one and always one when you want to sit down and bunk off. He's mine though. My responsibility and my problem. Sometimes even my friend, though obviously we wouldn't talk about most of that stuff and never in public. The point is, he's actually my responsibility, when it comes down to it. So if he stuffs up who does it come down to? Someone they'll never trust with a commission, that's who. We all know how the hierarchy works and I'm just about breaking even with it. So how do I get him to stop causing us all the troubles in the world and get back to being himself? In a time frame of about three days, of course. If only it were as simple as getting him a girl. Girls I can do…so long as they're not for long.

"What's the point of being able to run into trouble if I can't deal it when I get there?" His voice is relaxed, dangerously accented, smoke trailing from his fingers as he talks.

"It's got more to do with getting out, you prick." He's nicked my smokes again, which is something I'd usually complain about. "Remember that last bit of every brief?"

He fixes me with a look that speaks volumes, so I help myself to a smoke and light it from his, too lazy to try and find the lighter I know is probably also in his hands. Thieving bugger. "When?" The word comes out surprisingly steady, considering the shock.

"Leaving tomorrow. They told me on Monday but I was only going through the files yesterday. It's…pretty soon after Ozone. They don't know I know."

Nodding, I consider his options. There aren't many really. He can go and get killed, knowing that even with a successful outcome he won't be coming back on the exit they've planned, knowing that it exists only on paper…or he can pretend to go and disappear, to live whatever sort of life he can scrounge. If he's lucky he'll get some sort of cover story sorted and find a girl for a few months, maybe even a couple of years. But they'll monitor anything that might be him and he knows the risks of causing more innocents neutralised as well as me.

"Shit." There's not much else to say as we smoke on in silence. Gradually the sun tints the sky in front of us, moving through the spectrum from a lightly washed grey through oranges and reds to lilac, purple and finally a deep indigo that gradually fades to black, stars proverbially spilt across it. The whole show takes almost two hours, and through it all the only sounds we make are lazy exhalations of smoke and ice-cut breaths. I have no idea what he's thinking, but I'm trying not to think at all, to ignore the gnawing certainty that this is the last time we'll do this, the last time I can complain to him about smokes, or my lighter (which in fairness does always turn up again), the last time he'll even sit in this base and perhaps the last time I'll sit here without red flashes on. He's said before if there's any justice in the world I'll get promoted and shifted, made an officer, given my own squad and John MacTavish is very good at wrangling things. There's a fierce uprising in my chest as I glance over at him and hope with every fibre of my own lean, scruffy being, that that extends to wrangling his own life back.

"I know there's a girl…" I trail off delicately so he can glower at me and tell me to fuck off.

"Piss off" he says, automatically, like he doesn't even care. I take it as an indication that I can continue and do so, "going to tell her?"

"What's there to tell?" He adopts a high-pitched voice which sounds suspiciously Scottish and I wonder briefly if his mother is still alive, if this is going to be the first of many times I hear her voice ('Yes I'm Mrs MacTavish….no I haven't heard from my lad lately…I did know he was in the army yes…on operations you say?...' I turn away from the internal monologue, foolishly postponing a moment my brain knows it will have to deal with.) "Oh John don't go! I hate it when you aren't here! Promise me you'll come back!" Clearing his throat he adds bitterly, "I always promise her. I always mean it, too. But this time I know that I won't. How can I look her in the eyes then?" For the smallest moment the eyes that meet mine are anguished and confused before they skitter away to look at the clouds instead. Fitting.

"You could take her with you."

My suggestion is met by snorting and a discarded cigarette butt, "You don't know her well enough. She loves stability. Change isn't good for her. She'd need another job as well…" I frown a little, having always thought they'd met at the café she worked at. That's how I'd met her…the only way any of us got a good look at her charms. Apart from tomorrow's mission, John had all the luck. If you liked them dark and permanent that is. "Well so would you. It's not like you can live off your millions forever."

His laughter is a startling sound, but heartening, "God you'll never let me live that down, will you?" Fondly he cuffs my head, "need your hair cut. You look like a bloody scarecrow."

It doesn't solve anything but I feel a bit better anyway and I like to think he does too. "I need to look like a scarecrow. I'm going into town and I don't want to pick up some horrid old hag!" With a grin I wander along the path, "I'll see you at the pub. My shout." Unsurprisingly that gets him running off and I take the opportunity to thrust some money into his pocket on his way. That should keep him occupied long enough for me to cause a mild distraction and copy over all of the files so I can find out the full brief – I seriously doubt that Soap, flashed and experienced as he is, is capable of getting through all of their measures to see the full picture. I have no idea what I'm looking for but I hope like hell that I can find it, and find it before he comes back and chews me out for standing him up, fucks me into the bed, apologises and lets us enjoy one last night together and then buggers off to see the girl before disappearing forever. No pressure, Riley. None at all.

It takes a moment to work out where in the world we are since it's not as far East or West as I'd expect. In fact it's really just across the water, being in Catalonia, Spain. I can't quite repress a remembering smile at the location and a very nice long weekend despite the seriousness of the words in front of me and the symbols on the map. It's been a while since anyone worried about these separatists – there's enough to worry about with the peaceful, purely political, movements that they engage in. Skimming through the pages, sentences jump out at me:

"The ERC has gained more seats, being seen as a more genuine separatist party. Artur Mas' late-comers move to the separatist camp has therefore in a sense backfired as he can no longer lead outside of an alliance."

"Economic concerns are adding to the fire of Catalonian Separatism."

"Due to the high tax rates and large economy of the region, many feel that economic freedom from Span is in their best interests."

"Preserving the Status Quo in the region is important not only for regional stability within Spain but also with regards to more violent groups such as the Basques."

It's pretty clear what the general brief is and I don't have time to read the in-depth analysis of Catalonian history which appears to span on for another hundred pages or so, so I flick back to the map and try and work out which words might appear in the closer mission briefing that will help me. Some stand out as I scroll through, glancing at the other page for confirmation. Montserrat. The serrated mountain with the monastery. I once rock climbed nearby, listening to the choir boys stunning the tourists. Luckily that isn't on my record. Another name, another place. If it were….I'd probably be the one looking at a suicide run.

The brief is unsurprisingly detailed and includes the instructions that the material in the caves above the monastery (and perhaps the workers who are related to them and store them and arrange access) are to be neutralised and anybody who might have knowledge of the event soon after it happening are also to be neutralised. No wonder MacTavish dug around a bit – this one is suspiciously heavy for what is apparently a milk run. There's obviously a catch and the equally obvious place for it to be is Barcelona. The route in is the tourist train and then the funicular as a drop, mentions a side note, is too memorable for a tourist area; no agent wants to be remembered, no matter who they're operating under at the time. The exit route is just as carefully presented as a walk over the hills. This not being possible I explore alternative routes to suggest to Soap which involve biking in, driving in, and (though I don't think he'll go for this one) going in as a lone Monk on a pilgrimage. Getting out isn't so easy but my personal opinion is that with a lot of tourists, workers, pilgrims and children (with family to visit them), it can't be hard to sneak out if they don't know what you look like which should be doable if they haven't seen him go _in_. Provided the caches weren't being actively watched then nobody could get the information through in time to stop him getting out and going south. Or coming West again and then back home even though it was hard to say where home would be for him now. Finally, in the event that he thinks he can't get away safely, I prepare a last-resort back door that I have to steel myself to include in the brief. He'll probably kill me and die from laughter himself all at once.


End file.
